


The Heist

by JacarandaBanyan



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Art, Artist!Steve, Car Chases, Everyone is insecure, Flying Cars, M/M, Picasso bashing, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Theft, WinterIronShield Bang, WinterIronShield Bang 2017-2018, art theft heist, repulser tech has so many possibilities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-20 08:50:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13714221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JacarandaBanyan/pseuds/JacarandaBanyan
Summary: “So you know that one artist who’s a total recluse and never does interviews or anything? Rogers? Well, someone found some of his old artwork that he didn't want people to see, and it's going to be showcased in this fancy gala. So for… reasons I have to go and steal the art before the gala.”“I'll help.” Tony said immediately.Bucky twisted around in his lap to get a good look at his face. “What? Really?”Tony nodded furiously. “I'm with you all the way, what time is this heist going down, I'll clear my calendar. Though I would like to know how you know Rogers when the man’s so reclusive no one even knows what he looks like.”Bucky squinted at him. “That was seriously the worst explanation I've ever given you, but you're going to agree just like that?”“Yep.”





	The Heist

The door to the apartment flew open and Steve came tearing into the living room like a bat out of hell. He didn’t even stop to take his boots off, opting instead to track mud all over their clean floor. The little old lady with hearing aides downstairs probably heard the reverberating  _ bang _ from the door hitting the wall loud and clear. 

“... how did they even  _ find _ them, I painted that back when we were still living on Rapinane Street, that was years ago! I thought it was done, gone, never to haunt me again, and yet  _ here we are _ , dragging it back into the light of day for no good reason-”

Bucky blinked.

“Slow down, Stevie. I don't know what you're talking about.”

Steve took a deep breath. He looked half crazed.

“They found it, Bucky, they found that pile of dumb paintings I did for laughs. Remember, the silly little sketches I did back when we were living in the Riatta house? Some art major kid was in the area and she found the stack of them. How did she even get into my office? I'm sure I locked the door before we moved. Stop laughing!”

Bucky shrugged and kept laughing. “Come on Steve, this is hilarious! Those sketches were awful, I can't wait to see them go up in some big wig museum. Please tell me they found the one you did of Schmidt, that would be the cherry on top. That old bastard always thought history was going to remember him as some sort of great leader. I almost wish he was still alive just so he could see this.”

Steve pouted. “It’s not funny, Bucky. It’s embarrassing. I don’t want people to see that stuff!” His voice dropped a bit. “And that’s not all. They also found the mountain one. That painting I did when we were still traveling in Italy. You know the one.”

Bucky shook his head. “You painted a lot of stuff back then. You gotta narrow it down a bit.”

Steve made an uninterpretable gesture. 

“You know, when we were still living on Rapinane Street.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “The place where I could barely take a step without tripping over one of your easels?”

He didn't correct him, but Bucky knew that Steve knew that hadn't been the reason he could barely walk back then. He was starting to get what the big deal was, though. Not much of what Steve had painted back then had been for sale. Not much of it would have sold even if Steve had been willing to let anyone else see it. Those early paintings from before they'd moved to Rome but after Florence had been… well, they'd been something alright. Not necessarily something good. 

“So they found some of your sucky art. So what? No one’s gonna say it’s bad, they’re all too pretentious to dare even imply that they don’t absolutely adore everything the famous Steve Rogers ever put to canvas. You don’t even have to go and see it. No one’s forcing you to go into that museum and watch everyone else look at your stuff.”

Steve was starting to actually look distressed. “The one of you falling is going to be on display.”

Oh. 

Okay, yeah, this actually sucked. 

“What’s the plan then?”

“I need you to help me break into the Brooklyn Art Museum.”

“Sure thing, pal.”

  
  
  


Tony didn’t like big museum events. They were just excuses for the rich, gullible, and conceited to get together and pat each other on the back for their good taste in art without ever really looking at the art. All of them art snobs, not a single one of them art lovers. So he had no desire to host anything to celebrate the recovery of several original Rogers paintings.

Unfortunately, Pepper didn't quite see it his way. 

“Come on Pep, does the museum really need to have them?”

“Tony, this stuff doesn't belong to you, you can't just hide it away.” She kept up a brisk pace, probably hoping that if she just kept moving he wouldn’t be able to stop her. Unfortunately, she was probably right. He made a grab for the papers, but she just held them away and kept going.

“Don't I get any say in this?” He huffed. Why did Pepper have to have such long legs? Didn’t heels normally slow people down?

“People other than you deserve to see these paintings, Tony. Steve Rogers is a famous artist, people are going to want to see them.”

“Finders keepers-”

“Tony. Just accept it. It’s just for one night, and then you’ll have them back and you can hoard them away where no one else can enjoy them like some sort of dragon.”

She continued on her way with an air of finality, leaving Tony behind. He thought about continuing after her, then slumped and turned back the way he’d come. 

Guess he’d just have to enjoy the paintings that were still his to enjoy.

Tony would be the first to admit that he wasn’t really an art guy. He often didn’t get what was so great about a particular painting, or didn’t know the context, or was just plain bored by another portrait of someone he didn’t know. 

But Rogers was an exception. Roger’s paintings spoke to him in a way no other painting ever had. They ran blood hot and ice cold, fire bright and shadowy. They were ambiguous, and sometimes it seemed like they became whole new paintings when he wasn’t looking. They were full of contrasting bits and pieces that somehow flowed together, which was probably part of the reason Tony had been drawn to them in the first place. 

_ Down the Mountain _ was the first one he’d seen, and to this day it help a special place in his heart. In the painting a robot sat on a ledge with several wires and gears in its arm exposed. Two drops of blood quivered on the tips of the mechanical fingers. The ground was harshly sloped, and the robot looked like it was on the verge of slipping and tumbling down the mountainside. There wasn’t so much as a building in sight. 

That painting had ended up being the inspiration for Dum-E. 

As he’d gotten older he’d hunted down as many Rogers paintings as he could. It got harder as the man grew more famous, but he'd kept at it. He loved each and every one.

His favorites were hung up in the lab, behind a protective sheet of repulsor-proof glass. He wanted to have them there for inspiration, but he also didn't want any accidents.

He knew Pepper was right. He shouldn't keep those gorgeous artworks locked away where only he could enjoy it. He understood that intellectually. But the idea of a bunch of self-important high society snobs standing around talking about how much they loved art instead of actually enjoying the art made his blood boil, though not quite so much as thinking about those same people actually talking about the paintings. Their lips would say platitudes about how wonderful it was, while their eyes wondered what was so special about these paintings, what made them so grand that they got their own exhibition at a renowned museum. Just thinking about it got his hackles up. 

A rap of knuckles on the glass wall of the lab broke him out of his spiral of bitterness.

He looked up to see his boyfriend leaning against the door, waiting to be let in. 

He leapt up from his stool and crossed the room to let him in. Unlike some people he knew, his wonderful boyfriend didn’t come barging into his sacred temple of engineering whenever he felt like it. 

Bucky was wonderful and beautiful and exactly the person he needed to see right now. 

He opened the door with a flourish and pulled Bucky in by his mechanical arm. It whirred pleasantly under his fingertips, warm like a computer whose cooling fan had gotten overwhelmed. The heat made the arm feel that much more alive, and Tony had promised that he’d do everything in his power to make it lifelike. He was constantly making excuses to touch it, but he thought that this particular expression of his little possessive streak was completely justified. He’d crafted that arm himself early on in their relationship to replace the one Bucky had lost during his tour in Afghanistan. It did  _ things  _ to him to see something  _ he _ had made as a piece of his beloved. 

“What brings you down to my lair, honey? Actually, what’s been keeping you from my lair, it’s been how long since I last saw you?”

“Three days, Sir.” Jarvis helpfully supplied.

“Three days! That is far too long, and I wasn’t even blackout engineering, how did this happen?”

Bucky rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, Stevie’s been having a rough time recently, so I’ve been helping him out with some stuff.” 

Tony held back a wince. Ah yes, the other boyfriend. Steve. Whose presence in Bucky’s life wasn’t threatening at all. 

( _ Tony had been in open relationships before, but those had never been meant to last. He hadn’t cared enough about the other person to really worry that they would eventually, inevitably leave him, but Bucky wasn’t like that. _ )

“Say no more. I hope things are looking up now?” He tilted the last word into a question. That was what a good, emotionally available boyfriend did, right? Asked about their partner’s troubles? But at the same time, left the matter vague enough that Bucky didn't have to really tell him anything. They'd agreed from the beginning that he and Steve would never suffer through the awkward  _ I'm totally not jealous of you kissing my boyfriend _ meet and greet. Not even Bucky thought it would be a good idea for the two of them to meet; he was convinced they'd start fighting before they'd spent ten minutes together. 

Bucky's face twisted and he rocked his free hand in a so-so motion. 

“It'll be fine eventually. Actually, I wanted to ask you something about that. See- wait, no. Um. How do I explain this without talking about Steve?” He rubbed his eyes and turned his face into Tony's shoulder. 

Tony angled them awkwardly towards the couch in the corner and flopped down on it with Bucky in his lap with his face still pressed to his shoulder. Bucky snuggled up closer and Tony smiled. Steve aside, he was glad to see Bucky again. Not in the sexy, anticipatory way he had been glad to see bed partners in the past, but in a way that made a warm, fuzzy glow bloom in his chest and unfurl through his whole body, leaving him relaxed and content. 

“So you know that one artist who’s a total recluse and never does interviews or anything? Rogers? Well, someone found some of his old artwork that he didn't want people to see, and it's going to be showcased in this fancy gala. So for… reasons I have to go and steal the art before the gala.”

“I'll help.” Tony said immediately. 

Bucky twisted around in his lap to get a good look at his face. “What? Really?”

Tony nodded furiously. “I'm with you all the way, what time is this heist going down, I'll clear my calendar. Though I would like to know how you know Rogers when the man’s so reclusive no one even knows what he looks like.”

Bucky squinted at him. “That was seriously the worst explanation I've ever given you, but you're going to agree just like that?” 

“Yep.”

“ _ Why? _ ”

Tony sighed. “Remember that time I told you I wasn’t really an art person?”

Bucky nodded. A dopey smile slid tentatively across his face. “You said that everything Picasso had ever painted was just mangled, poorly-colored-in bullshit but that it clearly didn’t matter because the people that showed up to galas with Picasso pieces on display would call a baby’s finger painting a masterpiece if it had a famous signature in the bottom corner. Which I only eighty percent agree with, by the way. Every once in a while he painted something cool. And besides, art doesn’t have to be pretty to have value. What does this have to do with your incredible willingness to help me commit a robbery?”

Tony sniffed. “There’s not being pretty, and there’s being ugly as fuck, which is what most of his stuff is.”

Bucky rolled his eyes, and Tony smacked his metal arm in retaliation. 

“Ow,” Bucky deadpanned. A playful smile struggled at the edges of his eyes, but never quite made it out onto his face. “That hurt so much. I think you’ve broken it.” He collapsed bonelessly across Tony’s lap so that his head bumped against the edge of the couch and his arm flopped uselessly to the side.

Tony swatted him again for good measure, and Bucky’s expression finally cracked into a wide grin that made his heart kick into gear like a throttled engine. 

“That’s what you get for defending Picasso,” he said instead of  _ I love your smile _ . Something as sappy as that would ruin the lightness of the moment.

( _ and maybe that was too sincere, maybe he’s sound stupid and Bucky wouldn’t want him anymore because all he could offer was his money and his brain and Bucky had never wanted his money so he should just steer clear of stupid, sappy things like that _ )

Bucky snuggled aggressively into his lap so that his hips and tailbone dug into his thighs almost painfully. “Seriously, I didn’t have to convince you or anything. What’s up with that?”

Tony across the lab at some blueprints he’d left open. He could have an emotional conversation with his boyfriend. He just shouldn’t have to look at him while he did.

“I don’t dislike art, you know, I just don’t like the art world and would prefer if it refrained from encroaching unnecessarily on my life. One of the artists I do like is Rogers.” 

Bucky’s eyes widened, but he didn’t interrupt. 

“Every painting of his I’ve ever seen, which is all the ones anyone has been able to pry from Roger’s reclusive ass, spoke to me.” He smiled fondly at Bucky. “When I was younger, I kind of got one of his paintings to play therapist for me, which in hindsight was totally unfair to it, psychology is so riddled with faulty lines of reasoning and biased interpretation of ambiguous results that it shouldn’t even get to be called a science until it gets its act together. But it helped me a lot. It was the inspiration for Dum-E, actually.”

Bucky looked back and forth between him and Dum-E so fast he almost tumbled to the floor.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. I’ve thought about going and meeting him since forever, but he’s a recluse, you know? Probably wouldn’t appreciate some rando showing up on his doorstep waxing poetic badly about how awesome his paintings were. So I’ve just kept my eye out for any that do make it to the public. I own almost all of them, by the way. My favorites are here in the lab, but all of them are around here somewhere, unless Pepper’s bullied me into lending them out to some museum. She thinks they’re overpriced, but she also thinks Picasso’s crap is priceless, so clearly this just isn’t one of her areas of expertise. I bought the new ones you’re talking about actually, as soon as I heard about them.”

Bucky does fall off his lap that time, but he catches himself and scrambles back onto the couch before Tony can help him up. He opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, shuts it, starts again, then closes it more firmly and gestures for him to continue.

“Pepper never liked that I kept so many Rogers pieces to myself. She thinks they belong in museums, where everyone can enjoy them. And you know what, normally I let her. When it’s just another piece in a museum, the people that come and look at them usually care at least a little. They appreciate them. But at these galas? That’s a whole different situation. So she jumped at the chance to lend out these ones as soon as I’d bought them, and only bothered to tell me later.” He tried to keep his petulance contained, but it seeped around the edges. 

Suddenly he remembered that Bucky had never answered his question from before. “Why do you know this man, by the way? I’m pretty sure the whole recluse shtick means he doesn’t exactly casually make friends at the supermarket.”

“I know him through Steve.”

Ah.

“I see. Okay, no need to go any further. So yeah, I’m all for stealing those paintings back. They’re technically mine now anyway, so I can keep them out of the public eye. If Rogers doesn’t want people to see them, then they won’t be seen. I’m the only one who’s seen them besides the student that found them; they’re all wrapped up right now to go to the museum. If we steal them back before the grand reveal, no one else has to lay eyes on them at all. Besides, I’m annoyed at Pepper for loaning them to the museum without telling me until it was already a done deal.”

Bucky surged into his arms and hugged him fiercely. Tony hugged him back, and they slowly began to settle into their normal cuddle routine. 

Tony briefly wondered how Roger’s predicament related to Steve’s troubles, but the thought fled his mind when DUM-E started competing with Bucky for the title of Most Useful Metal Hand.

  
  
  


Bucky wasn’t really lying when he told Tony that was sure he and Steve would somehow find something to fight over within minutes of meeting each other, but it wasn’t quite as simple as that. 

Steve and Tony were both central to his life, and keeping them so completely separate was difficult for him. He wanted Steve to meet Tony’s robots- he’d love them, he was sure, and would want to paint them. Maybe he’d paint DUM-E brandishing the fire extinguisher when Tony blushed, or maybe Butterfingers trying and failing to hold something delicate. Sure, they’d fight, but it would be the sort of fight Steve loved. Probably over Picasso- Steve loved Picasso. Steve knew more about art than him or Tony, so Bucky was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on this, but Tony wouldn’t. Not in a million years. Tony would get up in his face and insist that Picasso was talentless and tasteless and that people should get over him already.

Bucky wanted to sit back and watch his boyfriends bicker about Picasso. Or at least carry their arguments back and forth like the world’s luckiest messenger pigeon and laugh at how ridiculous they were being. He wanted to tell Tony about his time with Steve in Italy, the beautiful _ and _ the ugly, without reservation. For Christ’s sake, Tony had made him a new arm and he hadn’t even been able to properly tell him the story of how he lost it, not the way he wanted to, because that story was caught up in the very soul of his and Steve’s relationship like a piece of cloth caught between grinding gears. Threads of it were tangled up in every aspect of his life with Steve. He wanted to talk about his new arm with Steve, but he never dared. What if for Steve, the new arm was a replacement, a complicated piece of their relationship that Tony had co-opted? 

He wanted more than he already had, and for that he deserved a scolding and a smack upside the head. Tony and Steve both loved him. His relationships with them were both stable. He had an awesome robot arm. He had no right to let this weigh on his heart as much as it did. 

  
  
  


Steve sat by the fire, trying to calm the tempest of emotions assaulting him from all sides. He’d put on a facade of calm when Bucky left this morning to see Tony, but now that he was alone he felt his composure cracking.

His art had always been personal. There was a big difference between what he painted to sell and what he painted because his soul would twitch right out of his body if he didn’t release some of his thoughts onto the canvas, but even the stuff he sold was contained enough of himself that he was afraid to let it go. And now it was all going to be on display for people to gawk at if he didn’t do something soon. 

On top of that, Bucky had left to see his  _ other _ boyfriend. Steve knew he had no right to feel so insecure about that; Bucky wasn’t doing anything wrong. They’d started this whole thing back when Steve had met Peggy, and Bucky had never once made Steve feel guilty about spending time with her. Now that he was in Bucky’s position, he owed it to him be just as understanding and accommodating as Bucky had been. 

He’d never asked to meet Tony, and as far as he knew Tony had never asked to meet him. He thought it would be easier to deal with if Tony remained some stranger, more of a concept of a human than a real person that could hold Bucky’s attention, but instead he found himself wondering every time Bucky left just what this Tony looked like, what he did, if he was a better boyfriend than Steve, if he felt this same way Steve was feeling now when Bucky was with Steve.

His art. He should be focusing on his art. Bucky had agreed to help him break into the museum, but that was easier said than done. They needed a plan of action. 

The jealousy writhed in his stomach like an angry snake, but he pushed it down.

Instead, he tried calling the museum one more time. It hadn’t yet worked, but he was the artist, wasn’t he? Shouldn’t he get some say in whether or not his art got put on display, especially art that he hadn’t sold?

He’d called so many times in the past couple of days, though. He didn’t want to get shut down again right this second, when he was already feeling down and paranoid and trying not to think about ( _ stop it you said you wouldn’t think about it _ ) Bucky and Tony.

But it had been different with Peggy. Bucky  _ knew _ Peggy. The three of them could spend time together without it getting awkward because they had all been friends at some point. There wasn’t this tension running through the whole arrangement, this deliberate carving out of spheres, where Steve didn’t know anything about the parts of Bucky’s life that included Tony and Tony didn’t know about the parts of Bucky’s life that included  _ Steve _ , and to think that there was such a large part of Bucky’s life that was untouched by Steve that someone else could fall in love with it, despite the fact that Steve and Bucky had been joined at the hip since grade school- that wasn’t a happy thought.

He half-heartedly tossed the phone onto the couch cushion. Who was he kidding? The museum hadn’t listened to him up until this point; why would they listen now?

He should have gone back for those paintings. What was he thinking, just boarding up his office and leaving? That people would respect his privacy and not try and break into his office and casually rifle through months of intense, emotional work meant only for his own eyes, and perhaps those of his boyfriend? 

He pictured the art critics that would surely be there at that fucking gala he’d seen advertised all over town. They’d titter about technique and question his symbolism and ignore the anguish and the guilt and the hope and the relief and the grief mixed in with the paint itself. 

Maybe he deserved this. The accident ( _ Don’t think about the accident, nothing good there, let sleeping demons lie _ ) was ( _ his fault, he should have been more careful, he should have been faster, he should have caught him _ ) not his fault, but he still could have done something. Could have paid a little more attention, could have moved a little faster. Perhaps this was the universe’s way of letting him experience some of the pain Bucky had had to suffer because Steve couldn’t grab him fast enough to keep him from going over that cliff.

A sudden ring from his discarded phone shattered his growing bubble of gloom. 

Steve started, then picked it up on the third ring. 

“Hey Stevie,” Bucky said. “I’ve found someone who can help us get you art back. Operation Re-Steal Your Art is a go.”

  
  
  


It always threw Bucky for a bit of a loop when people automatically thought he was hired muscle. It really shouldn’t, he knew, but he never really felt as imposing as Sam always said he looked. It was a little… uncomfortable to be reminded that he could be physically threatening to other people.   

However, it would work in his favor tonight, so long as he could find some guard’s clothes to steal. 

The trick was to not look suspicious. No sneaking around corners or looking over your shoulder. 

He nodded politely at the elderly gentleman in the ticket booth. Nodding was good for stuff like this. Easy going, but acknowledging the other person. Common enough gesture that it didn't stick out, but allowed you to keep moving towards your goal without getting bogged down in niceties.

“Excuse me, could you tell me where the guard equipment is? I was told it would all be kept on site.”

The man smiled and pointed off down a blocked off hallway with a sign reading ‘employees only.’ 

“It’s the last room on the left. It should be easy enough to find. Uniforms are in there too. Shaping up to be a crowded night, isn’t it? It’s so nice to see people getting excited about art.”

He nodded and headed off to pick up his disguise. He couldn't help a little smile as he sidestepped the  _ employees only  _ sign. Though intellectually he knew there probably wasn't anything too interesting back here, it still gave him a little thrill to be sneaking someplace he wasn't supposed to be.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw someone else slip past the sign and felt another shiver of excitement laced with fear. They turned into the first room to the right, without even noticing Bucky.

The room was at the end of the hallway, as promised. He nodded amiably to one of the other guards as they left the room, then set about changing into the uniform. He purposely picked something big and baggy on him, with lots of extra room in the chest. It would be too suspicious for him to bring a backpack or something, so this was the way it would have to be. 

He fastened the clunky device the museum provided for communication to his belt with a mix of derision and glee. What was that thing, a walkie-talkie? He was pretty sure a museum this famous could afford something a little… sleeker than this. On the other hand, he was going to enjoy using this thing when Steve pulled his little diversion later on. 

After making sure he had everything, he ducked back out of the room and headed for the second floor, where Steve's paintings were on display. 

  
  
  


Tony had been imagining something a little closer to Mission: Impossible when he’d planned his break-in to the central control room. He’d expected fellow tech people, familiar with the finer details of cyber security and the strengths and weaknesses of various types of surveillance. He’d at least expected to have to fool some sort of sensor.  _ He _ knew that most of the art here was boring and not worth stealing, but  _ other people _ never seemed to think so. Surely both person and machine would challenge his right to enter the inner sanctum. So he was very careful in selecting his break-in strategy.

He’d picked the lock on the service access door to the basement, in one of the lower, seldom-used levels of the underground parking garage. Once inside, he’d found a dimly lit corner to hide in and set about hacking into the building’s systems. Once Jarvis was in and he could piggy-back on the security cameras, he plotted a path to the control center that didn’t cross the path of anyone else in the building. That was his first clue that perhaps the security here wasn’t what he thought it was. It shouldn’t have been possible to get to the control room without crossing anyone’s path. Shouldn’t there be security guards or people leaving the control room to use the bathroom or something? 

He forged on, now doubly wary of getting caught. (Though, admittedly, he probably wouldn’t get into too much trouble even if he was caught. He, or rather, Pepper in his name, was a major patron of the arts and the owner of the paintings. What were they going to do?) He had to be missing something, but no matter how much he looked he couldn’t figure out what that missing piece was. 

He snuck around in the camera’s blind spots, of which there were surprisingly many, slowly drawing closer to the control room. Jarvis was well and truly in the system now, and could keep an alert from going off if Tony accidently tripped some unforeseen layer of security, could probably even alter the footage in real time, but he wanted to leave as few clues as possible. 

When he finally reached the control center, his heart was pounding like a hammer and he was looking over his shoulder more than he was looking ahead. It couldn’t be this easy. It just wasn’t possible.

But all he had to do to complete his break in of the control room was set Jarvis on the security cameras and scrub himself from the footage. There was no lock on the door, no one watching the footage, and the password to the computer was ‘password.’

That was when it hit him. The museum just… didn’t think their security system was important. It was just a means to an end - protecting the art. 

What a weird thought.

Once inside, he grabbed a walkie talkie hanging from a string cord around a peg on the wall with just his thumb and forefinger, like he was holding a leaf with an unsettling bug on it. Such outdated tech might as well be a direct insult, but it was what he had to use to contact Bucky. 

After taking note of the large number printed on Bucky’s device through the cameras, he keyed in the code to Bucky’s particular walkie talkie from the laminated sheet thumb-tacked above the hanging peg. 

“Everything’s ready.”

Bucky offered a discrete thumbs up at one of the cameras, then began unhooking one of the paintings from the wall. 

Tony made a few last minute checks to make sure Jarvis was well and truly in, then got up and made his way out. 

“Don’t let anyone else go in that room if you can help it, Jay. Misdirection, phony orders, you know the drill. At the very least give Bucky a warning if you can. And let our mysterious third party know that we’re ready for him. I’ll be waiting with the car.”

“Of course, Sir.” 

  
  
  


Steve jumped a bit when an unfamiliar voice spoke through the phone pressed against his ear. He hadn’t heard a ring or message tone.

“Everything is in place. You may now enter the exhibition room.”

“Thanks,” he muttered. 

He ran his hands over the front of his stolen janitor’s uniform to smooth it, tugged a bit on the sleeves, then hesitantly pushed the cart he’d found marked  _ cleaning _ into the room where his artwork was going to be showcased. 

It wasn’t a surprise, exactly, but it still felt uncomfortable to see these paintings mounted in such a large, empty room with little info cards neatly placed beneath or to the side. When he’d painted these, if had felt like they filled the room. Seeing them like this, with all this empty, well-lit space, almost made him feel like they’d been diminished. 

Bucky had already started taking one of the larger paintings down. None of them were all that big, certainly nothing bigger than Steve's torso, but it was hard for him to think of any them as small. 

They stuffed them into black trash bags filled with cloth and foam pellets, then loaded them onto Steve’s cart. It felt like someone should have come by now- they were trying to be quiet, but the pellets were kind of loud, and the trash bags were _ very _ loud. Each crinkle of plastic set Steve’s teeth on edge. He kept looking over his shoulder, waiting for someone to come charging in, demanding to know what they were doing, but no one came. 

Once the majority of the paintings were loaded, Steve set off with the cart to find the car Bucky had described to him on the way here. Bucky himself stayed behind to grab the last of the paintings and smuggle them out on his person. 

No one looked too closely at him as he wheeled his cart out of the exhibit room and through the halls, but he still felt like there were eyes on him. At one point, he noticed a security camera that seemed to be following him and nearly had a heart attack before remembering that Bucky had told him their mysterious third thief had broken into the security system to cover them while they worked. Whoever it was must be following Steve with the cameras to make sure he made it out of the building without issue. 

At last he was able to duck into a supply room and start unloading the cart. This proved nearly as nerve-wracking as walking through the halls; he wanted to go as quickly as possible and get out of here, but it was dark and cramped in here, and he needed to be careful if he didn’t want to damage the paintings. A drop of sweat slid down his neck, and he was painfully aware of each tiny hair it hit as it went. 

Once the paintings were safely unloaded, he opened the supply room door a crack, roved a suspicious eye across the empty corridor, then stuffed the smallest paintings under his shirt and scurried out the back door at the end of the hallway.

Once outside, he was immediately faced with another problem. He needed to find a car he’d never seen before. Bucky had said it was black and just outside, but there were quite a few black cars on this stretch of street. He felt his heart kick into a higher gear. He glanced around wildly, but none of the cars stood out as the one he was looking for. A man with a goatee brushed past him, nearly making him lose his grip on the paintings under his shirt. His skin felt too hot. Where was the car?

All of a sudden, alarms began to blare from the building. Steve jumped, nearly dropped his paintings, and began frantically peering into each black car, looking for any sign to tell him this was the one he was looking for. 

The phone in his pocket began to ring. He jumped again, then fumbled it awkwardly out of his jean pockets with red cheeks. Some passersby had begun to give him weird looks, which he probably deserved, so he tried to calm his racing heart down a bit before he accepted the call.

“Hello?”

“Hello. The car you want is the one two spaces to your left.” A crisp, British voice answered. “Please remain calm and put your paintings into the trunk of the car.”

“I need to go back, this isn’t all of them! I couldn’t carry them all, so there’s still a few in the supply room back inside!” Steve whispered urgently. 

“I know. I noticed that you were unable to carry all of them, and informed Sir of their location. He has retrieved them, and is making his way back.”

Steve heaved a sigh of relief. All was not lost. They’d been caught, yes, but what were the chances of them actually catching him, the artist, his boyfriend, and whoever his boyfriend had found to help out? Though perhaps there was a fourth person- the British man on the phone had said that someone called Sir had gone back for the rest of the paintings.

It took him a few tries to open the trunk. His fingers were shaking so badly from the adrenaline leaving his system that they scrambled against the release a few times before they finally caught. While he was unloading, Steve saw the goateed man who’d brushed past him exit the building and slide into the car with a noticeable bump under his baggy sweatshirt. Perfect.

Now where was Bucky?

  
  


Alarms blared and Bucky almost wanted to pout. They’d been doing so well! Just a little longer and they could have gotten in and out without anyone realizing that anything was amiss until much later. At least these were the last ones.

A security guard with his walkie talkie pressed to his ear started approaching him aggressively. Bucky finished zipping up the backpack with the two arm paintings inside, slung it over his shoulder, tucked the octopus painting under his arm and started running. The security guard behind him began to shout, but he was already gone. He zipped around corners as fast as he could while making sure his backpack didn’t clip the wall as he made the turn. 

Faintly, as though from very far away, he heard the guard chasing him yell into his walkie talkie, telling the other guards to cut him off at the lobby, so he made an abrupt turn to avoid the staircase to the first floor. He was pretty sure he could outrun the guard, who was already falling behind, but he didn’t know how much he could do against every guard in the museum.

Down the hallway and to the left was the door out onto the third floor balcony, where they sometimes had short outdoor exhibits in the summer. He yanked the door open so fast it rebounded off the wall and nearly hit him in the face as he skidded through it. From the balcony he began to climb down the fire escape towards the street. Tony had parked just down the street from here. 

The fire escape was rough on his hands, and he almost cut himself on a sharp bit of metal, but his escape was a success. Once on the street, he bolted towards where Tony had told him the car would be. 

There it was! Tony had picked something black and discreet and not easily traced back to him, and Bucky had memorized the plates before coming here. He picked up the pace again and dashed out into the street to reach the driver’s side door. Cars honked at him, but no one hit him, so really no one had anything to complain about. 

He yanked the door open and tossed the backpack on the far seat. He shoved the octopus painting at Tony, who was still bent double over his phone, undoubtedly sowing confusion to help Bucky make his escape.

Tony dropped his phone to get a proper grip on the painting. Bucky buckled himself in and revved the engine. In the side mirror he saw Steve rounding the corner. He stalled just long enough for him to slide into the car, panting with exertion, then yanked the steering wheel to the side and plunged headlong into the getaway.

  
  
  


Steve buckled himself into the back passenger seat and prepared for death.

He hoped the man sitting next to him with the octopus painting held tight against his chest knew what he was getting into, but somehow he doubted it. He knew all of Bucky’s friends and acquaintances with one notable exception, and he was fairly sure he’d never seen this man before in his life. The poor man probably had no idea what he was in for.

Bucky looked worriedly at the two of them in the rearview mirror, then pulled out into traffic and began to drive them away.

The very first thing he did was ignore a do not enter sign so he could merge illegally into the lane headed for the highway at dangerous speed. Only dumb luck stopped them from colliding with another car. Steve tried to close his eyes, but found that as soon as he did he started imagining all of the ways death could be approaching him while he wasn’t looking and forced himself to peek again. Bucky was in the middle of a spectacularly illegal U-turn. 

The new guy didn’t seem phased by Bucky’s terrifying driving. He was far more preoccupied with how the seat belt wouldn’t stretch over both him and the painting he was holding. Bucky made a sharp, sudden turn, and the guy swayed dangerously to one side, but he kept a death grip on the painting. 

“Just buckle yourself in, the painting doesn't need a seatbelt. Bucky's driving, you'll need it,” he said. He wanted to roll his eyes, but that wouldn't be very considerate, seeing how this guy had helped him illegally rescue his art. 

“Bucky driving is exactly why I have to buckle it in. We went through all the trouble to steal this thing, I don't want it to go tumbling around like some sort of… I don’t know, tumbleweed,” the man replied. 

“I can hear you, you know!” Bucky complained.

“I know,” they said in unison.

The guy relented, and finally buckled himself in. He tightened his grip on the painting, though. Steve had to wonder how Bucky had found someone willing to help them rob a museum on such short notice. Bucky said he wasn't a criminal, but who would just volunteer to help steal art at the drop of a hat?

The man pulled out a mobile device of some sort and started typing rapidly. 

“I’ve got Jarvis partially installed in the car, Bucky, so he can drive once we get out of the city. I’d have him take the wheel now, but I’ve only ever trained him on long, open roads without much traffic. He’s never driven in the city before, and I don’t think now is the best time to try it out.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Who is Jarvis?” Steve asked. Was he the British man from the phone? Did they leave someone behind? Was he somewhere else, helping them remotely?

The man didn’t even look up. “He’s the name of my AI, and he’s the best. He was the one keeping the cameras from catching you guys back there. Just a second… there we go! All ready to go.” 

He finally looked up. Now that Steve could see his face properly, he could have sworn this man was familiar somehow. But where had he seen him before?

The man frowned. “Hey Bucky, can’t you go any faster?”

“I’m already playing kind of fast and loose with traffic laws, so no, I think this is definitely as fast as I can go unless you can somehow make all this traffic disappear.”

The man looked thoughtful, and started fiddling with his phone again.

“I might not be able to make the traffic disappear, but there is something I can do, if it comes to it. I’ve… modified this car a bit, since I bought it. It has some cool new features. But let’s try and avoid resorting to that for now, shall we?”

  
  
  


Tony was the first to see the sleek black car with the museum’s logo emblazoned across the hood. At first he hoped it just happened to be going down the same street as them; they were close to the museum, after all. But it quickly became clear that the car was speeding towards  _ them _ . The police were also probably on the way. What a clusterfuck.

Bucky had noticed by then too. He cursed and swerved onto a side street without warning. Tony banged his head on the window, but didn’t lose his grip on the painting. The man next to him had to grab onto Bucky’s seat to avoid falling sideways into Tony’s lap. 

He still wasn’t quite sure how Blonde, Buff and Beautiful fit into their operation, but Bucky had been adamant that they include him, on account of how it was h _ is _ art they were stealing. Tony would have thought the recluse would have been happy to let other people go out and steal his art for him, but here they were. He sure didn’t look like an artist, but hey. Don’t judge a book by it’s cover and all that. 

Well, curiosity killed the cat and all that.

“So what do they call you, handsome?” He purred. It wasn’t his most elegant line delivery ever, since Bucky swerved wildly to avoid a cat just as he started to speak, but the other man still answered, so he counted it as a win.

“Steve Rogers, at your service.”

That wasn’t the answer he’d expected. 

He looked down at the painting he had a death grip on, then back up again. 

“You mean this is  _ your _ painting?”

Rogers nods. 

Huh. Well, he hadn’t expected that. 

When he was younger he’d scoured the web for pictures of Rogers, for interviews or promotions or anything that would help him learn about this man. He’d always been stumped; Rogers just didn’t like the limelight. He realised as he thought about it that he’d started to think of Rogers as more of an abstract spirit existing inside a tree somewhere; out there, definitely, but not something you could see or expect to be able to find on the internet. Seeing him in person was… kinda weird.

“And who do I have the pleasure of working with?”

“Tony Stark, at your service,” he echoed, smirking to cover up his abrupt panic. He was in a car fleeing the police with Rogers, the artist whose work had spoken to him on a spiritual level for as long as he could remember. Rogers could expect not to be recognised, but Tony was on the cover of too many magazines and the subject of too many news stories to hope that Rogers wouldn’t recognize him.

  
  
  


Bucky was biting his tongue so hard he was sure it would start bleeding soon. 

Both of his lovers were there. Together. 

On one hand, he desperately wanted them to put the pieces together and realize who the other one was. He’d respected their wishes to remain anonymous to each other, but he’d always held out hope that if they just put up with each other long enough to get to know each other, they could be friends. What was this if not the universe’s way of winking and giving him the thumbs up? 

On the other hand,  _ both of his lovers were in his car _ and neither of them would be happy if they caught onto the other’s identity. He knew Steve just as intimately as he knew Tony, and he was sure that the two of them could have a spectacular showdown should they ever butt heads. 

He cursed and turned down another side street, hoping that this one would be the one that threw the cops off. No such luck, of course. The tell-tale play of flashing lights on building walls continued to follow him around the corner. He just needed to get far enough ahead that he could ditch the two of them and let them spin some sort of story about stopping a reckless driver going too fast in the neighborhood. Actually, he’d have to take Tony with him, there’s no way someone as famous as him could pass himself off as a concerned citizen on a random side street. 

“So what do they call you, handsome?” He hears from the back seat.  _ Oh no _ .

“Steve Rogers, at your service.”

This is it. This is where things get awkward and they both realize who they’re looking at and start puffing up their chests and acting like territorial dogs and then they’re going to turn on Bucky and why did he let this happen, they didn’t want to meet each other and now they’re going to think he arranged this even though they specifically told him they didn’t want to meet each other, why did this have to happen right now-

“You mean this is  _ your _ painting?”

Bucky’s brain stutters a bit. Rogers? That was the part he latched onto? Not the ‘Steve’ part? 

“And who do I have the pleasure of working with?” 

“Tony Stark, at your service.” Tony sounds playful, but underneath he could hear other emotions, barely contained. Excitement, trepidation, disbelief. Bucky’s first thought was to reassure him that Steve wouldn’t get upset if Tony told him he loved the paintings he’d sold, that he’d just never intended for  _ these _ ones to ever be seen by anyone else, but how could he properly comfort his boyfriend without letting Steve know that this was  _ that  _ Tony? Should he just come clean and admit that he’d screwed up by even letting them lay eyes on each other?

“Really? That Tony Stark? The genius that’s been making all of those fancy prosthetics?”

Bucky watched Tony beam in the mirror, then turned his eyes back to the road when he nearly crashed into another car parked on the side of the street. He needed to get out of the city.

“Less making and more designing, I’ve been letting Jarvis and U do most of the boring assembly stuff, but yeah, that’s me. Have to say, it’s a lot more fulfilling than what I used to do.”

Bucky made a turn at the last possible moment onto a larger street, then again almost immediately onto the highway. Tony had a place upstate where they could hide out for a bit, get rid of the car. Once Steve left with his paintings, there shouldn’t be any evidence to connect Tony to the crime. 

He nearly made the wrong turn out of habit, then made the same mistake again a few miles later. He needed to be focused on driving, but with Steve and Tony chatting animatedly in the background he just couldn’t seem to bring himself to. 

How could they be this dense? How many Steves and Tonys did they think he knew? Any minute now they were going to ask the other one how they had met Bucky, and then they’d finally get it, and then he’d be stuck in this car with the rising tide of awkwardness that would surely come once they realized they were talking to Bucky’s Other Boyfriend and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

_ They’re not fighting yet _ , a voice in the back of his head piped up.  _ None of your fears of instant dislike have come to pass. _ Bucky ruthlessly shoved that thought aside (so ruthlessly, in fact, that his arm twitched on the steering wheel, nearly plunging them off the highway). Just because they weren’t fighting just yet didn’t mean they wouldn’t start the second they found out who they were talking to.

Sirens sounded behind them again. Bucky turned and looked through his rear view mirror and cursed. He’d thought he’d lost them.

“Hey Tony, you mentioned some special features?”

Tony nodded. “Yeah, I think we’re gonna need them. Okay, see that blue button under the speaker?”

“Yes?”

“Push it.”

  
  
  


Steve didn’t know what he was expecting to happen when Bucky pushed the button, but it definitely wasn’t for the car to rise up into the air. If the expression on Bucky’s face was anything to go by, he hadn’t expected it either.

“I’ve been playing around with some repulsor technology recently. Not anything serious, you know, but I was curious and maybe a little bit drunk and I thought, what if I made my car fly? And after that I don’t remember so well, I probably had a few more drinks while I was working on it, but in the morning the car was halfway torn apart and it had a bunch of little repulsors added to the bottom.”

Bucky looked amazed. Steve sure was. “How long can it fly for?”

Tony winced. “I, ah, never actually tested that bit, so why waste time? Lets go.”

Bucky nodded and stepped on the gas pedal. The car shot off.

  
  
  


At long last they lost their pursuers and made it out of the city. Tony fed Bucky directions to one of Tony’s houses upstate, and they headed north at a much more reasonable place. The car was on the road now, and they’d pulled over briefly so Tony could add some “identifying marks” to the passenger doors in an effort to throw off anyone looking to connect them to the car dozens of cameras had caught flying over the city, but that had been hours ago. 

No one said much after touching down on an empty stretch of road in the middle of a beech forest. Everyone was coming down from their own adrenaline high, and without the pressure of the police on their tail to keep them alert, their eyelids grew heavy. Jarvis eventually took over driving so that the three of them could get some sleep. Bucky kept shaking himself awake, which translated to the car suddenly swerving drunkenly into the other lane, which in turn woke up his passengers. 

As he slept, Steve dreamed. It was cold- winter had come to New York in a matter of moments, and the car was nowhere to be found. He was alone in the beech forest, shivering and listening to the wind rustling the dry, papery leaves like the ghosts of wind chimes. 

He looked down. His left leg was a mass of bandages, and he knew without looking that inside his shoes the ends were tied in little bows over his toes. The individual bandages were a mix of different colors and thicknesses. The familiar name of an Italian hospital was printed along one of them. He felt… not quite panic, he knew what real panic was and this wasn’t it. Perhaps it was the pressure he would have felt in his chest had he been panicking. The resistance when he tried to take a deep breath, the increased heart rate beating in his ears, the tensing and readying of his muscles, but without the confusion and terror of panic. 

Steve had walked out of Italy with all of his limbs, but Bucky had not. He glanced around wildly, but there was nothing but snow and trees and wind in any direction. 

His phone rang. It wasn’t his ringtone that played, but he immediately knew that the accelerating, rising opening notes of that Big Band jazz piece Steve always liked was coming from his phone. That was dream logic for you. 

He had a text from Bucky.  _ Look up, _ it read. 

He tilted his head back and strained his eyes against the brightness of the snow and sky. He had to squint, but he could just make out that there were metal birds perched in the trees above him. They were arranged in a circle above him. 

Once they were sure he had seen them, the birds took off. Steve could hear a little engine whirring as they flew. 

He followed them. They stopped every once in a while to wait and watch him battle through the snow. It was slow going for him- he couldn’t ask very much of his left foot right now. But he battled on in dream-time. His leg grew tired, and trees passed, but he couldn’t be sure if his leg was tired because he had over worked it walking, or because it always had been, always was and always would be tired. It didn’t seem that important that he figure out which it was. Sometimes he toiled and toiled, and the trees never moved even an inch, and other times he knelt to adjust the bandages on his leg and looked up to find that the whole forest had changed. But no matter how inconstant the forest was, the metal birds were always just ahead. 

At long last, he caught up with the birds and they flew no further.

He looked around. He was in a clearing, but if there wasn’t anything there. Just more snow and wind and rattling beech leaves. He looked back up at the birds, but they just stared at the snow.

He began to dig into the snow.

He didn’t know why. The birds didn’t tell him to (he thought) and the snow only came up to his calves so he shouldn’t be able to dig very far, but the part of him that knew this was a dream just rolled it’s eyes and went with it. He dug and dug and dug deeper and deeper into the snow, until at last his shaking red fingertips tapped against something hard. He swiped the remaining snow aside revealing a metal arm. 

He looked up at the birds, and noticed for the first time that they had the infamous Stark Industries logo painted on their wings. 

A gentle hand on his shoulder pulled him from his dream. The car had stopped, and when he rubbed his eyes open he saw that they were sitting in a garage of some sort. They must have made it to Tony’s house. He looked blearily at the hand on his shoulder, then at the man it was attached to. 

He blinked his vision clear, then shook his head to clear it and nodded at Tony. Somewhere in his brain, he felt a spark, a connection being made, a something firing that hadn’t been firing before.

Huh.

  
  
  


The three of them carried the paintings into the living room. That was okay. They had a simple task, and could work together on it in relative silence. Any questions were practical and easy - can this go here? Is there room on the couch for this one? Any left?

As soon as they were done, though, an awkward silence quickly fell. 

Bucky tried to look anywhere but at the two of them. He’d had the whole car ride to think about it, but he still didn’t have an answer. Should he come clean? Maybe they’d appreciate the honesty, but they also might be happier not knowing. Hell, part of their agreement was that he wouldn’t tell them. But they seemed to have like each other plenty on the way here. Was he being selfish? Or was he trying to be honest? At this point, he couldn’t even figure out what he wanted, let alone untangle the knot of reasons why.

Steve felt unsettled by his dream. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d dreamed about Bucky’s injury in some way. If anything, dreams like this should be old hat by now. But the dreams were always about Bucky. Sometimes they were surreal or nonsensical, sometimes they were nearly perfect reruns of the event itself, the aftermath, or of the hours leading up to it. He had to find Bucky, he had to help Bucky, Bucky’s arm was in some unlikely place - always Bucky. But this time, Stark Industries had made an appearance. Perhaps it was to be expected - Tony Stark himself had just helped him steal his art back from a museum, after all. If that didn’t make a mark on his subconscious, he didn’t know what would. But the dreams had  _ never _ strayed from Bucky before. 

Perhaps he was making too much of it. He’d just dragged two people into a theft with him over a bout of self consciousness. Was all this effort worth it? He tried to imagine just sitting back, letting the public ogle the pieces sitting on the couch to his left, but he couldn’t make it work in his head. It just felt so viscerally wrong to let go of these pieces. There was a good reason he’d never sold these. There were too raw, too personal. He couldn’t bear to be asked ‘and what inspired this one?’ from a chipper journalist. He didn’t want to know that his pain and guilt and grief and relief and thankfulness to god that Bucky had survived was hanging in a gilded frame in someone’s house as a pretty thing to make the walls look less bare. When he tried to imagine people scrutinizing the way he’d worked through the whole accident, critiquing it and rating it and dissecting it and putting it under an academic microscope made him feel like it was his soul they were rating and dissecting. It was just too much.

He needed to stop being so indecisive. What was done was done. Everything was fine- they’d escaped with the art, they’d made it here in one piece, and he’d gotten to meet Tony Stark for a nice cherry on top. Though, now that he was thinking about it again, how did Bucky know someone like Tony Stark?

He felt that spark in the back of his mind again. He felt more and more sure of it each passing moment- but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what  _ it _ was.

Tony was slowly coming to realize that maybe it wasn’t a great thing that Steve Rogers himself was in his house, even if he didn’t  _ think _ he had any of his art here. The guy was clearly ready and willing to organize a major art theft to keep people from seeing some of his art. He probably didn’t know that Tony held more of his art by far than any other person on the planet, but he’d still probably remember eventually that Tony had bought his art from him many times before. Was he this upset that Tony had  _ Down the Mountain _ hanging in his workshop? Come to think of it, how much of his art had he bought from third parties? Did those third parties have Steve’s permission to sell his stuff? 

It was Jarvis who ended up breaking the silence. 

“Sir, I have taken the liberty of ordering food and it should arrive shortly. Would any of our guests like anything to drink until then?”

“Right, good thinking Jarvis, um. So. Want anything?” 

Steve looked like he was about to say no, but Bucky plowed right over him. 

“Do you have any of that weird, thick coffee with the owl on the label? I could do with a jolt of caffeine right about now. I don’t think Steve’s ever had it.”

Tony could have kissed Jarvis. 

“Okay, I’ll go make some. If you have questions about the house or something, Jarvis can answer. He knows everything I do. Be right back!”

He turned and fled into the kitchen before either of his guests could say a word.

  
  
  


Bucky watched Tony flee, but didn’t try to stop him. It was probably better to give Tony some space. Besides, this gave him the chance to check in with Steve without his other boyfriend around. 

“How are you holding up, Stevie?”

Steve smiled, but looked a little pale. “I’ll be fine.” He tilted his head back and gazed up at the ceiling, looking for some sort of camera. “Hey Jarvis?”

“Yes, Mr. Rogers?”

Steve smiled at a shadowed corner that looked like it could have a camera in it. 

“Thank you for your help today. You did a lot, didn’t you? You broke into the security system, edited all that video footage, and you drove the car after Bucky passed out. I know I’m a little behind the times, but I didn’t know there was anything out there that could do all that.”

“You are most welcome, Mr. Rogers. Sir has long admired your work.”

“He has, huh?”

Bucky recognized Steve’s thinking face and panicked. He moved into his sightline as casually as he could, hoping to distract him from whatever it was that was inspiring that look. 

“You’ll like this coffee Tony’s got, it’s too thick to sip. You’ve gotta pour it in your mouth and swallow it like you’d swallow mashed potatoes. Only takes about half a minute to hit your bloodstream, and believe me, you’ll know the  _ second _ it does. It really-”

“Hey Bucky?” Steve interrupted, eyes fixed on Bucky’s metal arm like he’d smeared something bright and glittery on it. “Is this  _ Tony _ ?”

  
  
  


Tony paced in the kitchen. 

Steve Rogers was here. In his house. Steve Rogers, that Bucky just  _ knew _ and had never said anything about because he knew him through  _ Steve _ \- wait a minute.

Bucky knew Steve through Steve.

When he put it that way, it sounded…  _ oh shit _ .

“Hey Jarvis?”

“Yes, Sir?”

“What do you think is the probability that Steve Rogers and Bucky’s Steve are the same person?”

Jarvis didn’t answer immediately, which was worrying in and of itself.

“That seems rather likely, Sir.”

Perfect. He was finally meeting the mysterious other boyfriend, and he was the reclusive artist who only begrudgingly sold his work, which Tony owned a sizeable collection of. 

_ Shit. _

Maybe he’d redeemed himself? He  _ had _ helped steal his art back, which in his opinion was a pretty stand-up thing to do. And they’d hit it off pretty well in the car. Maybe it would be okay. Yeah, he just had to stop panicking, collect himself, get the coffee, go out there and  _ oh no he heard footsteps coming this way. _

He scrambled around the island in the middle of the kitchen and lept towards the walk-in pantry. Maybe he could hide in there? No, wait, Bucky was sure to look for him there, he’d hid in the pantry that one time he was hiding from Pepper so he could skip the Board meeting and spend the afternoon with Bucky, no way Bucky wouldn’t know to look there. Could he maybe make it out the window? Or one of the cabinets? 

Before he could decide, No-Longer-Mysterious-Other-Boyfriend himself walked in. Bucky trailed behind him, looking panicked and sheepish.  _ Me too, honey, me too, _ Tony thought.

Steve stopped a few feet from Tony, looking expectant. Bucky took a deep breath, then came over to stand between them. Tony considered fleeing, but Steve didn’t look upset right this second. In fact, he looked like he was some weird mixture of content and nervous. Which didn’t make any sense. He should work on programming Jarvis to read human facial expressions for him, he was clearly miss-reading this one.

He looked to Bucky, hoping for some sort of help. Unfortunately, Bucky was looking at him the exact same way. 

“So, Tony, I never actually introduced you to Steve. Properly, I mean.”

In Tony’s opinion, Bucky didn’t look like he particularly wanted to rectify that mistake. There was fear in the crinkle of his eyes and the way he refused to look directly at Steve.

“So here goes. Tony, this is my boyfriend, Steve. Steve, this is my boyfriend, Tony.”

Steve smiled. “I’m happy to meet you, Tony.”

His heart was beating like snare drum. “Nice to meet you too. Umm, please don’t be mad that I have so much of your art?”

Steve was still smiling. That was a good sign, right? “That’s different. That’s stuff I sold.”

“Oh. Ah, good. I guess.”

How could he keep smiling through all of this awkwardness? Even Bucky looked like he wanted to sink into the floor.

The coffeepot chirped, and Tony rushed over to it, mentally praising the coffee gods. 

“Tony.” Steve said. Tony froze, coffee pot in one hand, cupboard handle in the other. “I’m really happy to meet you. I’d like to get to know you better. Bucky loves you, and I don’t really know anything about you, which might have been a mistake. Maybe we should have met each other right at the beginning. But after today, I think we can still set this right. I’d like to get to know you better. Is that okay?”

Tony slowly put the coffee pot down and turned to face him. One part of him wanted to dive for cover and hide forever. They’d agreed not to meet! This was exactly the situation they had all wanted to avoid. Jealousy and insecurity colored his thoughts. Could he really just sit down and talk with the other man Bucky loved? But another part of him was screaming over the other part that this was probably one of those crossroads moments where he could either do the right thing and set things down the right path, or ruin everything. He didn’t really want to ruin everything. He’d liked Steve in the car, hadn’t he? Maybe this could work. 

He glanced at Bucky, who looked torn between terror and hope, then back at Steve, who was patiently waiting for his answer.

“Sure. What do you want to know?”


End file.
